


Joyriders

by rockafansky



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Buzzards vs. War Boys, Cameos, Car Chases, Eye Trauma, Original Character-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-07
Updated: 2017-07-07
Packaged: 2018-11-29 02:21:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11431161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rockafansky/pseuds/rockafansky
Summary: Of course, they waited to attack until a blind man was behind the wheel.





	Joyriders

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve always thought the Buzzards were cool. I read about them in the comics, they had me at, “Buzzards eat moths and live in an abandoned parking garage”. Thanks for reading.

The desert sprawled in front of them, wide and open as the cloudless sky above. As the sun crawled higher over their heads, mile after mile of road rolled under the patched up wheels of their sedan. For the longest time, they drove in silence, the metal death-trap and its rusty spines baking them in the winter heat.

Rhast scowled behind the chaser’s cracked windshield, shielding his blind eyes from the sand.

Beside him another Buzzard, a young man called Myrhn Silvestrov, sat behind the wheel of the car, staring placidly at the empty horizon. Mask-up, his expression was invisible to the world, but to Rhast most of all.

Rhast held his own mask and goggles in his lap, despite Myrhn’s pleas for him to guard what remained of his face. He paid them little mind, simply bowing his head as he kept the sand at bay with his gloves. Lazaria had insisted he keep the mask on him at all times, and he was not about to disregard her as he did her brother, but he still held the thing far away from his face, as he would a red-hot spike before welding it onto the hood of his dragster. Rhast was not a driver anymore, and felt he did not really deserve to wear the symbol of one.

“How are you faring, Rhast-ka?” asked his companion without taking his eyes off the road.

Rhast snorted. How was he faring?

_I’m blind, you idiot._ He wanted to reach over to Myrhn and shake him. _I’m done for._

Instead, he growled, “Where are we going?” again and Myrhn was silent.

Rhast felt another twinge of annoyance, for although he lacked the ability to read a compass or look out the window, his curiosity remained unimpaired. His eyes were not quite so intact.

It had happened many suns ago, on the most scorching day of summer. Camped outside the canyon on watch, some of the other scouts had cooked breakfast off the scalding hoods of their cars. The Badlands’ omnipresent horned lizards cooked well on their makeshift fryers, made a decent meal. This was Rhast’s clearest moment of the mission, of the whole day. His memory had been left with many gaps.

Myrhn had provided the rest of the details. A pack of Rock Riders daring to venture outside their stronghold, cutting clear path through the sand on their rusty bikes, had pushed into Buzzard territory, where Rhast and Myrhn had been waiting with Lazaria and the others. Rhast got behind the wheel of his spiked dragster, Myrhn strapped in behind him, manning the launcher. It wasn't like the Buzzards to go looking for a fight, but if one wandered into their territory, it wasn’t like them to deny themselves a piece of the action, either.

Rhast maneuvered his dual-engine dragster with speed and skill; soon they overtook the vanguard’s position at the front, trailing close behind the bikes as Myrhn struggled to reposition the heavy launcher. The dragster’s toothy front grill devoured the distance between them, and soon the rearmost bike felt its bite. The Rock Rider sitting on top of it twisted in his seat and docked an explosive right onto Engine #2, where it stuck as the bandit gunned his bike and sped off, leaving the two Buzzards in the car with the notion that they had probably gotten a little too close to that one.

The explosion took out both engines and both of Rhast’s eyes.

Myrhn coughed. “Don’t you worry, Rhast. We’re almost there.”

He reached out and smacked the right-hand switch behind the wheel, hoping that the windshield wipers would creak to life and swipe aside some of the sand building up in the cracks of the glass, but nothing happened at all. To be expected in gas-guzzling junker like this. Being a gunner, Myrhn didn’t get many chances to drive, and would have loved the opportunity to take the old chaser out for a spin, but Rhast’s beloved dual-engine dragster had been disassembled for scrap metal as soon as they’d returned to the Garage on that blistering day. If Rhast had been conscious at the time, Myrhn imagined he’d have gone headfirst into the furnace before he let them melt down his car. Pity it was too late for that now. He’d had to make due with Lazaria’s secondary vehicle, a rusty old sedan prone to belching black smoke from its tailpipe.

“Was this little outing approved?” Rhast asked him as they went over a bump. Myrhn saw his mask slip off his lap and land on the floor of the car, yet his friend made no move to pick it up again.

“Not exactly.” Myrhn admitted. “But we’ve come too far to turn back now.”

“Does Lazaria know we’re here?” Rhast pointed a gloved finger at him.

Myrhn tried to sound nonchalant. “My sister is on a scouting mission today. By now, she’s closer to the Bog Walkers than to us. I’ll have her old jalopy back in the Garage before she misses it.” Rhast sat back against his seat.

“I knew it.” he said flatly. “You’re finally going to kill me today.”

Myrhn almost laughed out loud, and would have if he’d been certain his friend was joking. Blind as he was, Rhast was powerfully built, and Myrhn had all the brawn of a stick insect. The thought of taking him on in arm wrestling was scary enough; his odds of winning a fight were nonexistent.

“No.” Myrhn assured him. “You’ve not outlived your usefulness just yet, my friend. My hope is that we’ll both live through today’s excursion.”

“Which would be…?” Rhast prompted.

Over his masked mouth, Myrhn made a motion of zipping his lips that he knew Rhast could not see. “I can’t tell you. It’s a surprise.”

“Every step I take is a surprise for me, Myrhn.” Rhast shifted in his seat. “I never know when the ground will fall out from under me.”

Myrhn floored the brakes then, and Rhast flew forward in his seat as the sedan came to an abrupt halt.

“See, just like that!” he complained, rubbing his neck. “Why did you do that?!”

“Hah! I’m out of practice!” Myrhn shot back with a laugh. “You would do much better.”

“Of course I would.” Rhast said, and waited for his friend to say something else. But nothing came. “What’s the matter with you? Keep driving.”

“I can’t. We’re here.” Myrhn said.

“And where is here?”

Rhast could hear the smile in Myrhn’s voice. “The middle of nowhere.”

“What?” Rhast rubbed at his scarred face. “I don’t understand, Silvestrov.”

Myrhn took off his mask and goggles, revealing a knot of dark hair, a light scar on the bridge of his nose, and most notably of all, a dastardly grin. “We’re in the center of the Badlands, Rhast-ka. In it’s very heart. Miles and miles of sand in every direction. Whichever direction we drive, there will be nothing to hit.”

“What are you going on about?” Rhast turned to face his friend, who didn’t move despite a strong inclination to flinch at the sight of his ruined features. Instead, Myrhn’s smile grew even wider.

“Let me rephrase it for you.” the Buzzard said. “Rhast-ka, whichever direction _you_ drive, there will be nothing for _you_ to hit.”

It took a minute for his words to sink in. “I’m going to drive.”

“You’ve uncovered my plan!” Myrhn reached over and mussed up his friend’s fiery hair. Rhast didn’t move to swat his hand away.

“I can’t do that.” His voice sounded hollow.

“You sound as if you’re just repeating someone else’s words.” Myrhn waved his hand. “You’re a driver, my friend. What good is a driver if he lets himself get out of practice?”

“No good.” Rhast said blankly. “I’m no good anymore.”

“You didn’t forget how to drive in that crash, did you?” Myrhn demanded.

“Of course not, but I can’t just—”

“Get behind the wheel?” Myrhn finished for him. “Oh, but you can. See, the seat’s not even occupied.” He opened the driver’s side door and hopped out into the sand. “It’s all yours.”

Rhast hesitated, but eventually his desire to start driving again outweighed his fears of being absolute shit at it. He slid into the other seat, gloved hands hovering over the steering wheel.

“Hang on!” shouted Myrhn from outside. “Don’t leave without me!” He jogged around the spikes to the other side of the sedan, fishing his glasses out from one of his pockets and quickly polishing their cracked lenses with the edge of his shirt.

“And I’m definitely not going to hit anything?” Rhast sounded suspicious. “If I just start driving now…?”

“You’ll be fine.” Myrhn assured him, sliding his glasses on and blinking a few times, his vision adjusting. Without warning, Rhast slammed on the gas, and the car jerked forward five feet before he hit the brakes with a gasp. Myrhn’s already damaged lenses nearly flew off his face.

Rhast’s lips twisted into a grimace, his hands gripping the steering wheel with immoderate force. Myrhn pushed his glasses back up the bridge of his nose.

“Maybe you ought to…start small.” he suggested.

Rhast nodded weakly. “Yes. I think that’s a good idea.”

Slowly, this time, he eased his foot onto the pedal, and the sedan croaked to life at a crawl, a snail’s pace. It was so unusual for Rhast, a speed demon, to be so _careful_ , but Myrhn supposed he could not blame him.

“You could go faster than that,” he offered. “You won’t run into anything.”

“I know!” Rhast snapped at him. “I’m getting there.”

Rhast’s grip on the wheel tightened, and he could feel his knuckles turning white underneath his gloves. He pushed down harder on the gas pedal, and felt the rusty sedan surge to accommodate his change of speed. Now they were going faster, and there was already sand in Rhast’s teeth. He felt the wind whip his hair, felt the rumble of the metal beast underneath him, and it energized him.

Until the sedan came down wrong on a dip in the sand, and Rhast felt the junker lurch beneath him. He panicked. His boot landed hard on the gas, and with the sudden rise in speed, felt himself losing control.

_Brake, brake, find the—_ He found the pedal and floored it. The sedan stopped as suddenly as if they’d smashed into the wall of the Garage. Rhast heard a dull _thump_. Myrhn’s head against the dashboard!

“Silvestrov!” he shouted. “Myrhn! Say something!”

“I’m fine.” came Myrhn’s voice from beside him. “It was just a bump.”

“I can’t be doing this.” Rhast pried his hands from the wheel. “Not when I can’t see the road in front of me. It's ridiculous!”

“It just takes some getting used to!” Myrhn protests. “So you were afraid—”

“I was _not_.” Rhast grit his teeth. “I’m just smart.”

“A smart man would trust in his loyal gunner. He would know that I’m telling the truth, that there is nothing he could possibly do out here that would crash us.”

“It’s not that.”

“It’s exactly that!” Myrhn protested, and suddenly Rhast was fit to be tied.

“I am _not_ a driver anymore!” He roared, and his friend fell silent. “If you can't see, you can't drive. You, of all people, should be able to understand that.”

Myrhn frowned, pushing up his glasses again. “I am not a driver. You are. That’s who you are.”

“In the sense that I have no purpose without it, yes.”

“Then drive. You have the space. You have the car. Do it.”

“But there’s no _point_.”

Myrhn smacked the dashboard. “Who gives a damn if there’s a point? Is there really a point to anything we do around here? Lazaria goes on scouting missions every week even though she knows there’s no scrap metal to be found in the Bog. I do my job and ration all of our food supplies even though I know the city’s just going to attack the heap like rabid animals when the time comes. And you…”

Rhast folded his arms.

“Your sight is gone, your car is gone, but you’re still sitting behind the wheel.” Myrhn pointed out.

“So what?”

“So, _drive._ ” Myrhn pressed. “If you can’t do it for the good of the colony, do it for your own good."

Rhast considered this. “How can I drive when I can’t rely on my eyes?”

“Easy.” Myrhn answered immediately. “If you can’t trust in your sight, then trust in me.”

Rhast reached over to Myrhn’s side of the car suddenly, startling the other Buzzard until he realized he was searching for his mask and goggles. Myrhn retrieved them from the floor of the car and handed them over. Rhast placed the gas mask over his mouth and slipped the goggles over his half shut, half melted eyes. Before hiding away his glasses and equipping his own mask, Myrhn noted that his friend almost looked himself again.

…

Soon they were hurtling across the sand at breakneck speed, Rhast at the wheel and Myrhn whooping and banging his fists against the roof of the sedan. They hit a few bumps, but they were mere wrinkles in the desert's perfect blanket of sand, blips in the wasteland's rise and fall.

“Hang left!” Myrhn cried. “Now turn right here!” He was having fun with this. “Rhast, let’s do some donuts!”

Grinning like a maniac, Rhast was happy to oblige. He jerked the steering wheel and sent them spinning, carving spirals deep into the sand. For the first time in a long time, Rhast felt alive.

Myrhn let out another whoop as Rhast veered out of the turn.

“I see cars!” he shouted suddenly, hanging halfway out the window.

Rhast did not slow. “Where are they from?”

Myrhn squinted, his eyesight failing him. “Well, they can’t be Rock Riders, I know that for sure. I suppose they must be from the Citadel!”

“Is that so?” Rhast _hmph_ ed. “War boys, then. Maybe we’re getting a little to close for their liking.”

As the sedan continued to streak across the desert in the war boys’ general direction, Myrhn began to pick up more specific features of the sickly-looking lackeys and their rides.

“Yes, definitely war boys!” Myrhn gave the roof another pound to make sure Rhast was listening. “That must be their stronghold, in the distance. We’re very far from home, Rhast!”

“We’d really better turn around.” Rhast grimaced.

“Then why are you not doing it?” Myrhn climbed back down, back into his seat.

“Because…it’s…stuck…” To both men’s horror, no matter how hard Rhast tried to wrench the junker’s steering wheel, it would not budge from its current position. The position that had set them up in a deadly beeline toward their enemies.

“Rhast, stop the car!” Myrhn exclaimed.

“If we stop now, they’ll only drive out here to meet us!” Rhast argued. “We'll become captives!”

“The longer you drive, the closer we come to their territory!”

“The sooner we stop, the sooner they’ll cage us and drain us of our blood!” growled Rhast. “We keep driving!”

The war boys, who were perched on the hoods of their vehicles sunning themselves like lizards, did not know quite what to make of them. They watched the rapidly approaching spike-covered sedan, murmuring to each other in their own language. The murmurs turned to shouts of alarm and confusion as the jalopy shot past them, and the war boys jumped into their chasers as the Buzzards fairly flew towards their Citadel.

They were being followed.

“They’re on us!” Myrhn shouted, “Rhast, we have to turn!”

“You think I don’t know that?!” Rhast continued to jerk the steering wheel in both directions, but the junker had given up.

_This is not how I die!_ Rhast thought, despite the fact that he’d often fantasized about dying in this very way. But fantasy and reality were two very different things. With a roar, Rhast gave one more yank to the left, and the wheel unstuck, grinding free of whatever sand or refuse had held it in place.

The junker banked hard, and Myrhn practically hung himself out the window to get his sister’s car back with four wheels on the ground. The whole time, he laughed.

“You did it!” Myrhn cackled. “Whatever you did, it worked!”

“Which way am I going?” Rhast demanded.

“Adjust our course, we need to go further right or we’ll end up on a collision course with the war boys!”

Rhast obliged, steering in what he hoped was the right direction. The war boys adjusted their courses as well, and soon enough, three vehicles were on their tail; a beat-up old Coup, a tricked-out Plymouth sedan, the roof lined with barbed wire, and a pickup truck with a bed full of spears driving in between the two. Myrhn drew in a sharp breath when he saw the lancers on either side equip themselves with spears from the center vehicle.

“What? What is it?” Rhast was alarmed by Myrhn’s quiet.

“They’re armed.” Myrhn said through his teeth. “You need to go faster.”

“What’s the road ahead look like?”

“It’s all just sand. Start turning left. Let’s see if we can get back to the Garage without getting skewered.” Rhast nodded and jerked the wheel left, and the Buzzards headed further into the open desert.

The war boys were relentless. As they got closer, the two lancers positioned their spears.

“Hard right!” shrieked Myrhn. Rhast managed to evade one of the spears, but the other one shattered the sedan’s back window, sending it to the dust with a thousand shards of glass. Lazaria was going to waste them.

Myrhn popped open the glove compartment, searching for even the smallest pistol to fight back with. He found nothing but the dry corpses of moths, and the war boys weren’t done yet. Re-equipped with spears, the Coup had made its way to the front of the pack, reminding Myrhn of Rhast’s old dragster in its speed and maneuverability. The lancer riding on its back looked right at Myrhn, baring his teeth in a grin, and his mouth seemed much wider than it should have been. Then the driver shouted something in their language from inside the car, and the lancer remembered his job and took up a spear. Myrhn watched him aim for the back of Rhast’s head.

“Left! Now!” Rhast steered them away, and the spear glanced off one of the sedan’s rusty spikes. A second, from the Plymouth, curved in the air and simply smacked against the empty frame of the sedan’s back window. In an instant it had flipped and buried itself in the ground in front of the Coup, whose driver swerved to avoid getting stuck on top of it, nearly throwing the unfortunate lancer into the dust.

The Coup’s sudden change of course blocked the path for the other two vehicles, gaining Rhast and Myrhn distance between their unarmed car and the arsenal of spears held by their enemies. Better yet, it bought them some time.

“We may lose them yet, Rhast, drive faster!” shouted Myrhn, breathless from the attack. Rhast pushed the old junker to its limits, flooring the gas and bracing himself for an impact that would never come. They shot through the sand, the war boys’ brigade struggling to keep pace behind them.

Rhast did not allow them close enough to attack again. As soon as Myrhn saw the outline of the Garage in the distance, he watched all three Citadel vehicles come to an abrupt halt, the war boys inside them braking hard at the site of Buzzard borders.

Myrhn poked his head through the sunroof and swore at them, although the war boys couldn’t understand what he was saying.

“I take it we’re nearly home.” Rhast noted, taking his foot off the gas. Myrhn swayed up above, trying to keep his balance as the junker slowed suddenly.

“The Garage is just ahead.” he told the Buzzard in the driver’s seat. “We probably ought to switch places again.”

Rhast said nothing.

“Rhast?”

“I don’t want to switch.”

Myrhn exhaled. “I know. But it must happen.”

More silence. The sedan gained speed.

“Rhast-ka…” Myrhn voice hit a warning note. “We’re very close now. You need to stop.”

The ex-driver did not listen, and they went faster still. Myrhn saw the mouth of the sunken Garage approaching them at breakneck speed, saw a group of armored Buzzards congregated near the entrance.

“Stop!” Myrhn howled, trying to guard his head. “Rhast, stop the car! STOP!”

Rhast’s boot slammed on the brakes, and the car slid across the sand like a runaway dune-sledge. He did not move a muscle until he was certain the sedan had come to a halt. On the passenger side, Myrhn was curled up in his seat, his unlatched seatbelt wound around him like a pit viper. In a last-ditch effort to make some use of it, he had pulled out the buckle as far as he could and held on for dear life. Neither Buzzard was injured, nor was any member of the group gathered outside of the Garage. But as Myrhn lifted his head, he realized with horror that the sedan hadn’t just almost-killed a small party of noncombatants milling about the entrance.

Their vehicle had come to a stop mere inches from the boots of the Generalissimo.

Myrhn hurriedly put the junker in park.

“What’s going on?” Rhast demanded. “What are you doing?”

“ _D’Varga. Silvestrov_.” A smooth voice echoed from the depths of the Generalissimo’s rust-red helmet, and Rhast fell silent. Both errant Buzzards stumbled out of their car and dropped to their knees before her.

“ _Citadel vehicles were spotted within the sweep of our territory._ ” The Generalissimo continued, her voice a low growl. Rhast sensed a pair of glimmering yellow eyes looking down at them through the slits in her helmet. “ _My scouts confirm it was you who led them here._ ”

At this, Myrhn could not resist lifting his head to protest. “Generalissimo, I must—” But when he looked up, he saw Lazaria standing beside the Kapitan, at the right hand of their leader. Without a word from her, he knew she had turned them in.

Myrhn started again. “They did not dare approach us.”

The Kapitan cleared his throat and sent forth a booming voice, tinny behind his red steel mask. “Idiot. They will return to their Citadel and gather greater forces.” He turned to face the Generalissimo. “What is to be done with them?”

“With me!” Myrhn blurted out suddenly. “It was my decision to drive out so far. Rhast is blind; he didn’t know where we were going. Do not punish him for something he wasn’t even aware of.”

“Myrhn!” Rhast protested.

The Kapitan may have frowned beneath his mask. “What is to be done with him?”

“ _Make an example of him._ ” Myrhn felt his stomach drop as the Generalissimo’s mouth curved into a smile. She leaned over him, and when she spoke to her right-hand man, she was staring at _him_.

“ _When the Citadel’s forces come for us, make sure Silvestrov is in the center of the action, so he can see what he has done.”_

“Yes...” The Kapitan trailed off, unsure of the meaning of her words. Myrhn could have sworn he saw the Generalissimo roll her yellow eyes.

_“Why don’t we bind him, and weld his chains to the hood of a chaser?_ ”

“No!” Rhast jumped up as they made to drag Myrhn away, but he stumbled, felt himself get trampled in the dust. Chaos erupted in the mouth of the half-sunken Garage. By the time Rhast was able to get to his feet, Myrhn was gone, lost in the darkness, and so was everyone else.

Disoriented, the Buzzard tried and tried to turn himself in the direction of the Sunken City, to follow his friend and save him from punishment, to navigate his way inside the underground tunnels on his own. But he couldn’t even find the entrance. All he felt was sand.


End file.
